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Windows 7: Questions about backup on windows 7. Wanting to test out win10

You both made it clear that a system image of C: would include my three programs. Good. That's now settled.

Q 1: But does that mean that they will be restored so that they appear to the OS as fully installed as though by their install files and ready to run?

Lady Fitz said "create an image of an external drive, saving the image on a drive in the computer, then delete everything on the external drive and try to restore the image made back to the external drive."

I will do that. It will give me confidence (hopefully) that I have mastered the technique (it seems simple!). Then, I will make a system image of my C: drive, restore it on to an external USB drive and inspect that to see what has arrived.

Presumably, that drive will not be bootable. I suspect that only the C: drive allows booting unless special steps are taken to make another drive bootable. Therefore, one purpose of making a system image is to have saved the boot area before a crash and then allow everything to be loaded back on to the C: drive for booting and getting back to normal (as at the date of the system image).

Q 3: But can a system image be placed on an external USB HD which is then bootable?

ignatzatsonic said "C is a partition. Not a drive. Images are typically made on a partition by partition basis." and "Therefore, if you in fact make an image of the C partition (who knows?), it will include EVERYTHING on C, Windows, cat pictures, applications, licensing information, minute details of the configuration, etc. Whatever is on C, in its entirety."

Please see a clip of my SSD. It contains two partitions: one, 100 MB in size, (which contains the EFI system which I think is concerned with Input/Output), and the second which is bigger. I have looked at Macrium's instructions and its video and it seems clear that all I have to do to make a system image image is to drag my two partitions on the the target drive which appears in the Macrium window. Then, I could restore that image to my C: drive using Macrium and that C: drive will be bootable, as before.

Q4: True?

By the way, I don't want to roll back from W10. I am happy with 7. (W10 was mentioned because the OP mentioned it.)

You both made it clear that a system image of C: would include my three programs. Good. That's now settled.

Q 1: But does that mean that they will be restored so that they appear to the OS as fully installed as though by their install files and ready to run?

Lady Fitz said "create an image of an external drive, saving the image on a drive in the computer, then delete everything on the external drive and try to restore the image made back to the external drive."

I will do that. It will give me confidence (hopefully) that I have mastered the technique (it seems simple!). Then, I will make a system image of my C: drive, restore it on to an external USB drive and inspect that to see what has arrived. It should look in Windows Explorer exactly like my C: drive - everything there.

Q 2: True?

Presumably, that drive will not be bootable. I suspect that only the C: drive allows booting unless special steps are taken to make another source bootable. Therefore, one purpose of making a system image is to have saved the boot area before a crash and then allow everything to be loaded back on to the C: drive for booting and getting back to normal (as at the date of the system image).

Q 3: But can a system image be placed on an external USB HD which is then bootable?

ignatzatsonic said "C is a partition. Not a drive. Images are typically made on a partition by partition basis." and "Therefore, if you in fact make an image of the C partition (who knows?), it will include EVERYTHING on C, Windows, cat pictures, applications, licensing information, minute details of the configuration, etc. Whatever is on C, in its entirety."

Please see a clip of my SSD. It contains two partitions: one, 100 MB in size, (which contains the EFI system which I think is concerned with Input/Output), and the second which is bigger. I have looked at Macrium's instructions and its video and it seems clear that all I have to do to make a system image image is to drag my two partitions on the the target drive which appears in the Macrium window. Then, I could restore that image to my C: drive using Macrium and that C: drive will be bootable, as before.

Q4: True?

By the way, I don't want to roll back from W10. I am happy with 7. (W10 was mentioned because the OP mentioned it.)

Q 1: But does that mean that they will be restored so that they appear to the OS as fully installed as though by their install files and ready to run?

Yes. That's what restoring a system image is intended to do.

But it could fail. It isn't foolproof. Know what you would do if it fails.

What you would typically do if it fails is do a clean install. The point of system imaging is to save you TIME. The time required to reinstall Windows, reinstall programs, and then reconfigure both.

Lady Fitz said "create an image of an external drive, saving the image on a drive in the computer, then delete everything on the external drive and try to restore the image made back to the external drive."

I will do that. It will give me confidence (hopefully) that I have mastered the technique (it seems simple!). Then, I will make a system image of my C: drive, restore it on to an external USB drive and inspect that to see what has arrived.

Q 3: But can a system image be placed on an external USB HD which is then bootable?

Do you mean "can a system image be restored to an external USB HD and would it be bootable?

I don't think so, without a lot of hassle. Windows doesn't like to boot from a USB drive.

BUT---you can restore to an external connected by eSATA. I've done that myself by using an external docking station into which I'd placed an ordinary "internal" type drive. I had an image of C sitting on an internal drive inside the PC and restored it to the docking station drive and was then able to boot my PC directly from that docking station drive. I operated my PC in this way for a week a few months ago when my SSD failed and had to be replaced.

Please see a clip of my SSD. It contains two partitions: one, 100 MB in size, (which contains the EFI system which I think is concerned with Input/Output), and the second which is bigger. I have looked at Macrium's instructions and its video and it seems clear that all I have to do to make a system image image is to drag my two partitions on the the target drive which appears in the Macrium window. Then, I could restore that image to my C: drive using Macrium and that C: drive will be bootable, as before.

Q4: True?

I don't use UEFI yet, so the following refers to a standard MBR installation and what I would do to make an image in that situation:

I never use the "drag and drop" method. I use Macrium by opening it and using menus.

1: Open Macrium. All drives are displayed. Choose "image this disc" directly under the C drive.
2: A new screen pops up. Here is where you select the destination folder. You can make a new folder if you want. Poke "next".
3: A new screen pops up, displaying a summary of your intentions. Examine it. If OK, poke "finish".
4: A new screen pops up entitled "What do you want to do now". Here you choose whether to just run the backup now or to save the backup as an XML file", which is effectively a short-cut so it could be run many times in the future without doing steps 1, 2, and 3 again. I always select "run this backup now" and uncheck the XML choice. Then click OK. The imaging begins and takes about 8 minutes for my C drive, which has about 40 GB occupied.

I don't know how or if UEFI complicates anything, but I've been told by reliable sources that it does NOT and that Macrium is fully compatible.

My boot drive has exactly 1 partition: C. I'm not sure what the screen for step 1 above looks like if you have multiple partitions on the boot drive. You'd presumably have to include all partitions necessary to boot Windows.

The restoration process is something else entirely. The most important point about it is to make sure your "recovery disk" aka "rescue disk" will in fact boot your PC.

With your help and after reading some help files and Macrium’s tutorial, I have had some success in testing my ability to make and restore my C: drive.

WHAT I DID (I started at a slightly different point than ignatzatronic did at post no. 14 but the result is, I think, the same.) I Right Clicked on a system image of C: which I made with Macrium Reflect (free) and chose Explore Image. I loaded the image to an external HD because (obviously) I didn't want to risk overwriting my C: drive.) (I avoid the word "restored" because my real C: drive was not restored).

RESULTS After the loading I could see three more drives: O:, P: and Q:, one for each of the THREE partitions (Macrium found a third) on C: (Image01). P was described as "inaccessible) (Image02 shows other messages). All my C: drive folders were listed in the new O: drive(two Program folders, Intel, Users, Windows etc.). In Program Files I could run and use Adobe Photoshop CS6; InDesign CS6; Bridge and also Lightroom, and the few other simple programs and personal files I keep on C:. Programs (x86) opened as well, with, for example, Thunderbird opening and I could run it and see the Address Book was complete. I am sure all the programs I ran were running from the loaded version of C: because while running each produced a copy of their icon on the Task Bar at the right-hand end (the originals are all at the left hand end), and I could hear the external HD exercising. However, MS Office components (Word etc.) failed to open (just the activity pointer going round until it stopped

After restarting the computer I entered a second round by repeating the above but instead chose Restore after Right Clicking on the same System Image. This went through the same stages as in the first round, ending as before with the 12 minute process of assembling the files for O: (the window with two long progress bars at the bottom) but immediately it started the activity lights on the external HD and on the computer were off and when I tried to open O: the drive would not respond and Start > Computer did not show it. One time I had a struggle to re-format it because Disc Management at first did not find it but the second time there was a healthy drive in Disc Management that looked like an empty C drive (that is, two partitions). (Image03)

I have gone through the procedures for both rounds a countless number of times with minor changes (and in creating the image itself I sometimes selected only the first and third of the three partitions that Macrium found).

CONCLUSIONI succeeded in making an image, also in the first round (above) I succeeded in producing a disc (O: ) with all my C: files but MS Office failed to run. The second round was a failure. Consequently, although the test was on an external HD rather than by overwriting and booting on C:, I have not been able to confirm that Macrium and I would be able actually to restore a failed C: so I must continue to rely on Windows Backup and restore system (although I have read that its image does not include everything on the C: drive.)But I would like to master Macrium.

Here is an oddity. Disc Management shows my C: having two partitions while Macrium thought I have three partitions, the extra one being empty and when asked to format it, it would not.

QUESTIONS

Q1. Why does Macrium add a third partition to its C:?

I expected to get a disc copy working as well as looking exactly like my C: drive. It is good that it failed early and not after I had overwritten my C: drive if I had done a real restore of my C: This does not give me confidence.

Q2. Why was the attempt to create a drive in the second round a complete failure(Macrium > Restore rather than > Explore).

Q3. Why did Microsoft Office components not work (Word etc.)?

Help appreciated on how I can produce a restoreable copy of my imaged C: drive which will run all programs etc.

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